


New Light

by Letters_from_the_TARDIS



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bad Wolf!Rose, F/M, Time Lady!Rose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 08:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letters_from_the_TARDIS/pseuds/Letters_from_the_TARDIS
Summary: After the death of the Meta Crisis Doctor, Rose Tyler becomes Bad Wolf and literally rips her way through the fabric of reality to reach the Doctor.





	New Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladarax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladarax/gifts).



> A shoutout to ladarax, for prompting this fic. 
> 
> Accepting song titles as titles for future chapters. If you have a suggestion, send me the title and a link to it.

Bill  
Bill Potts woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, still convinced that she could feel her hands slipping from a broken lever. Could still feel herself falling. The odd thing was, it felt like a memory.

Bill slid out of bed, deciding to see if the TARDIS was as infinite as she'd been told. She wasn't paying much attention to where her feet carried her, until she reached the TARDIS console room.

Smiling, she gently patted the console. The ship let out a quiet, urgent hum in response. Bill got the strange sense that the impossible ship was trying to tell her something.

She looked down, shaking her head. That was when she noticed the pair of sneakered feet sticking out from behind the console. The Doctor didn't wear shoes like that, and the legs appeared to be female. They weren't moving. Bill, overwhelmed by concern for the unknown woman, momentarily threw caution to the four winds. She straightened and rounded the console.

A young woman lay there, face down. Her blonde hair was fanned out over the floor, and she wore jeans and a blue-black leather jacket. Bill wondered briefly how she'd gotten on the TARDIS. She knelt down beside the woman, momentarily afraid that she wasn't breathing. Flipping the unconscious woman onto her back, Bill felt around for a pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found one.

Abruptly a feverish hand latched onto her wrist with bruising strength. Burning golden eyes snapped open, boring into Bill’s dark ones. That couldn't be normal. The woman seemed to be struggling to speak. Bill leaned in closer to hear. “The Doctor… need the Doctor.”

Bill recoiled slightly. She knew about the Doctor. “I don't think that's wise. I can get Nardole, though.”

The woman sat up with an effort, and whispered two words into Bill’s ear. “Tell the Doctor that. He'll listen.” She went limp, and Bill eased her gently to the ground. Bill left to go get the Doctor, those eerie words still ringing in her ears.

The Doctor   
The Doctor leaned back in a plush red armchair, fingers steepled over his middle. As he often did at this time of night, his mind wandered into the past, and remembered the many faces that dwelled there.   
Scarlette.   
Riversong.   
Jo.   
Tegan.   
Charley.

But there was one face and name he had tried and mostly failed to forget.

In his ninth body, her love had been the only reason he'd seen fit to keep living. In his tenth, her smile had been etched onto his very hearts, a testament to his love for her. Even after he'd lost her. In his eleventh incarnation, the ache no longer threatened his very existence, though he still felt like fragile glass. In this body, the knife-sharp pain of losing her had faded to a mere tingle.

But his love for her burned as bright as the golden flame she'd once been. He suspected he'd carry that love to the end. His end, because she'd been dead and gone for centuries.

Her name was Rose Tyler, and she was the one woman for whom the Doctor had broken the Time Lord’s rules.

But it hadn't been enough. The Doctor tried to forget her, and most nights he succeeded. Some nights, like tonight, Rose seemed closer than ever. On these nights, he could almost remember her face, and all of her deeds burned bright, as if inscribed on the night sky, from Bad Wolf to striding parallel to parallel.

It had been eleven hundred years since he'd last touched Rose Tyler. Since he'd last seen her face.

The Doctor sighed, lifted a hand to rub his face - and stopped. Bill stood in the door, a look of near-panic on her face. Then she said two words that sent all the blood rushing out of his face. “Bad Wolf.” She blurted.

Up until that point, the Doctor had been ignoring the input from his telepathic centres. A constellation of billions of tiny sparks of life burst inside his brain. Including one inside the TARDIS. The Doctor didn't even bother to say anything, just bolted for the console room with all of his considerable speed.

He skidded to a halt just on the other side of the console, and slowly picked his way to her. Her face was blurred and faded in his memory, but he had no doubt that the unconscious woman who lay on the floor of his TARDIS was one Rose Tyler.

Joy and terror chased each other around his hearts in equal measure. She was alive! But Rose might not stay that way if he didn't do something. There wasn't even a question. The Doctor scooped her up and headed for the medbay at a brisk jog.

Bill  
She stood in the door of the medbay, watching as the Doctor listened with a stethoscope to the unconscious woman's heartbeat. Bill had seen the Doctor sarcastic, serious, and silly, but never tender. It was quite obvious that he loved the woman, whoever she was. So why had he never mentioned her?

Rose   
Rose's world was a hazy sea of pain. There was something wrong with her hearts - no, wait, that couldn't be right. Rose only had one. Didn't she? Nevertheless, her senses were telling her otherwise. Slowly Rose became aware of her surroundings. She was lying on a cold, metallic table. The cold metal of a stethoscope pressed into her skin.

Sound came next. She could hear the beating of five hearts, including her own. Over that, she could hear two voices, one conversational, the other sounding rather grumpy. The grumpy voice had a pleasant Scottish accent, the other a cheerful London accent much like her own. “She's waking up.”

“Just who is ‘she’? You never said, Doctor.” The last bit was less cheerful and more accusing. Wait, what? Doctor? Rose sat up so fast that she overbalanced and started to fall over again. Two strong hands caught her and lowered her back down.

Rose belatedly opened her eyes. Two faces loomed over her. One was young, female, and inquisitive. Her telepathic senses told her that the other face belonged to the Doctor. Rose studied him curiously, while wondering which face this was. He had an age worn face, with piercing ice blue eyes, attack eyebrows, and a sharp expression that softened somewhat when he looked at her.

Rose made an effort to sit up more slowly this time, and watched with amusement as the Doctor hovered like a mother hen. She could feel the young woman watching them curiously. Rose realised that she was being just _slightly_ rude to the Doctor's friend. She twisted as much as she could without falling over. Extending a friendly hand, Rose grinned. “Hi, I'm Rose Tyler. What's your name?”

The other woman gingerly shook Rose's hand, as if she thought she might bite. “Bill Potts.” Rose was dismayed to see faint, fingerprint-shaped bruises on Bill’s wrist, even more so when she realised that she had put them there. Her grin faded.

Bill looked between her and the Doctor. “So how do you know the Doctor?” A wave of memories punched Rose in the gut.

_Her first Doctor, spinning her around while music lit the air. Bad Wolf. Changing, seeing everything. A broken lever. Striding parallel to parallel, determined to find the Doctor. Then, later, came the memory of a broken, dying Doctor._

Rose had cried when the timelines were altered, knowing that her Doctor had died, and there was nothing she could do about it. She'd walked away, for pete’s sake. Rose knew her eyes were overflowing with memories. “I knew him a long time ago. He was a different person back then.”

Rose could feel the Doctor's flinch. She instantly regretted her words. Rose hadn't meant it that way, but she didn't know what to say to fix it, not with Bill there.

Bill looked between the two of them, those sharp, curious eyes seeming to zero in on everything between them. “I'm going to the kitchen to fix myself a cuppa. Do either of you want anything?” They both shook their heads.

Bill walked out with casual, I'm totally not up to something nonchalance. Rose chuckled slightly, shaking her head. At the Doctor’s odd look, she elaborated. “I think Bill ships us.” This got her a downright comical look of complete bewilderment. “The Doctor, the other Doctor, discovered a phrase called shipping, which means to want to people to be in a relationship. It was popular for about fifty years in the other universe.”

The Doctor   
He watched with longing as Rose looked at him with merriment lighting up her eyes. Then sadness dimmed her eyes from luminous amber-gold to bitter, brittle chocolate. “How long has it been for you?”

The Doctor swiped a hand over his face in weary frustration. “Eleven hundred fifty six years and three days.”

Rose’s eyes widened, and she let out a slightly shaky laugh. “It's only been sixty years for me.” Rose brushed a hand lightly over his face. “How many?”

He didn't have to ask her to expound on that statement. “Two faces. I'm on my thirteenth regeneration, twelfth face.”

Rose grinned teasingly. “If Jackie were around to see us now, she'd have a heart attack from the age difference.”

The Doctor laughed, and was surprised by how good it felt. “As long as she doesn't hypothetically slap me.” He paused. “What I don't understand is how in the name of Rassilon you got on the TARDIS while she was in flight. Or how you now have two hearts and register to my telepathic senses.”

Rose ran a hand through her hair, looking tired. “It's a long story.”

The Doctor snorted. “Then I suspect I'll be here for a while.”

Rose smiled at him. “Rude.”

He smiled back, remembering the other half of their old joke. “And not ginger.”

Rose took a deep breath, and began to tell the story. “About ten years ago, not long after the other Doctor’s death, I noticed that the walls of the universe were permeable. Things started coming through. Even a TARDIS or two. Around that time, someone tried to mug me, and Bad Wolf came back.”

The Doctor studied her face. Were those flecks of gold in her eyes? The Doctor reluctantly pulled himself from his thoughts. “What happened next?”

Rose smiled. “When I woke up from it, I could see timelines. And in one, my timeline interwove with yours.” She played with a lock of hair, seemingly lost in thought. “Bad Wolf and I ran through countless universes in search of you. We met several versions of you, parallel versions. One actually had destroyed Gallifrey. Oddly enough, he lived with a Time Lady version of me. Strange looking bloke. Wore Victorian clothes, and had longish curly hair.” She broke off at the Doctor's look. “You're not seriously telling me you regenerated into him once?”

The Doctor nodded, feeling somewhat embarrassed of that incarnation. He'd been ridiculously sappy.

Rose's eyes lit up, obviously delighted to have something to tease him about. “Don't worry, Doctor. You're always a pretty boy to me, no matter what face you wear.” She leaned up to kiss his cheek.

The Doctor touched the spot where her lips had rested, feeling odd. It had been so long since he'd last seen Rose, he wasn't quite sure how to react to her. The Doctor stood up and began to pace, deep in thought. “So you've noticed changes in increments, every time you became Bad Wolf. The first level of change was extended lifespan. The second was probably telepathy and time senses. And so on. But this time, something was different. This time, you'd reached the maximum amount of changes. When Bad Wolf manifested, for the final time, there weren't any more modifications to achieve. So Rose, you can't become Bad Wolf again. It'll kill you or force you to regenerate.”

No reply, except a tiny, soft snore. The Doctor turned around. Rose was curled up in a ball, one fist tangled in his discarded coat. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos and feedback are appreciated on my first twelve x Rose fic.


End file.
